


Bounty on Happiness

by only_one_word



Series: The Difficulty Flying with a Broken Wing Attached [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Mental Health Issues, Night Terrors, Panic Attacks, Violence, and more - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_one_word/pseuds/only_one_word
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles starts caring way too much about Derek, and he doesn't even know why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bounty on Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Description of Derek dying in multiple ways. Never actually happens. (Ever.)  
> And this was actually written forever ago, so there are structural errors that I haven't fixed/hadn't caught. ~~Not beta'd.~~

Stiles doesn’t know how to handle it. 

He doesn’t know when he starts to even care, but the nightmares start sometime after the pool, and sometime before he ran his Jeep into Jackson.

When they start he doesn’t always remember them. The only thing he knows is that we wakes up gasping, crying out with sweat soaking his shirt and tears on his cheeks. His Dad doesn’t run in because his Dad is back at his job. Most times he’s filled with too much fear and anxiety to even move. Aside from the faint tremble to his fingers that he sees when he tries to unclench his fingers form the sheets, and the rapid breathing. That feeling again was probably more frightening than whatever the dreams were about. They didn’t happen days in a row, and he had thought that it was a one time thing until the second. On the days he’s more aware, all it takes is a gunshot to make his fear spike, sending him into reality and tearing away the last pieces of the dream.

His first panic attack since he could still smell his Mom's perfume in the house is two weeks in, after the last time he sees Derek. He’s talking with Scott and he doesn’t know what sets him off, only that they were talking about exactly that; the last time they had seen him. He’s lucky that Scott remembers the inhaler. He’s not as lucky the second time. His Dad has to talk him down, and the worry on his face afterwards hurts like guilt. 

He gets his hands on Scott’s inhaler again, and keeps in around. Just in case. 

The dreams don’t stop. 

He’s had nine by the time the next panic attack happens, and he’s on twelve when he can remember the dreams. There are other things going on, hunters, and there’s fights being won and lost just outside of his attention, but all he can focus on is too far away and just close enough at the same time. 

Allison’s with a gun and it’s pointing at Derek. 

Chris with a bow and arrow, too close to Derek not to kill him if he shoots. 

Kate with a shotgun- it doesn’t matter that she’s dead- taunting Derek about something, but he can’t really hear it. But he can see the gun as it shoots the Wolfsbane bullet right into Derek’s chest.

A few times Derek already is injured; once with an arrow in the side keeping him on the ground, and another time with darkened veins and a pale face. 

Stiles keeps doing what he has to, keeps functioning. Scott hardly notices and his Dad has no time to. There’s more supernatural stuff going on again, so Scott is busy making sure he doesn’t die again and his Dad is busy investigating what’s going on and getting closer and closer to what Stiles never wants him to find out. He’s worried about his Dad and he helps Scott but there’s an otherworldly layer to his life when he turns off the light to go to bed, wondering if he’ll dream again or not. It feels like insomnia, but he sleeps, if it counts.

He’s not sure what he’s going to do when he comes back in contact with Allison, or the other Argents. But he knows it’s not them and he doesn’t really care. It’s just Derek _dying_. He’s not even looking in his direction, doesn’t even seem to notice he’s there every time one of the hunters lands the final blow. It feels irrational, he knows it’s irrational, and by now he’s used to irrational. But he can’t stop what he’s feeling, or the terror when he wakes up, or the shaking and the sweat and the tears.

Werewolves are irrational too. The Kanima happening, lying to his Dad, keeping secrets from Scott, all of it is irrational.  

Derek comes to Scott first. Scott talks about it in whispers, saying that Derek needs their help and that something big is happening, saying that he doesn’t trust Derek. Still, there’s a sudden release of tension that Stiles didn’t even know he had at the mention of Derek being alive. Stupid, but it happens. He can tell Scott is confused. They don’t talk about it because Scott is his best friend and he will let Stiles come to him when he wants to. 

Stiles sees Derek not long after. He isn’t sure what he was expecting when he got the text to be at his house latter that day, because the Alpha needed to talk to him. The vaguely uncomfortable face and stiff shoulders weren’t it. 

“What’s going on this time?”

His voice sounds normal at least. The nervous bubbling energy is out of place. 

“I need help.” Derek looks almost pained. Any other time Stiles would crack a joke, mention it, make him more uncomfortable for the sake of it. “Peter-“

“Peter?”

“My uncle.”

“Who’s dead.” Stiles blinks. “Wait, he is dead right? Still? Like he’s supposed to be after you slashed his throat open with your claws. Because I don’t know about you, but that looked pretty dead to me-”

“He came back to life. I don’t have time to explain this.”

The nervous energy was building. He wasn’t sure if he needed to kick Derek out, or keep him as close as possible. Maybe stick him in his closet.

His fear was ridiculous, he knew that, he felt like an idiot. Hopefully no one could tell, passed it off as something else.

“Well?”

“I need your help to convince Scott to help me. I would go to Peter, but I don’t want to if I have any other options. Okay?”

Derek looks frustrated now, if it’s at asking for help from Stiles, or for asking for help in general, or even having to consider them options because of Peter, Stiles really doesn’t know but if he had to guess it was probably all of those things and then some stuff he doesn't even know. Stiles swallows a few times so that he know his voice won’t crack. It doesn't.

“Sure. Fine. Can you leave now?”

Derek gives him a look. But he goes after that, sticking his head out before jumping out the window.

That night the dreams start to morph. 

It’s Peter, and sometimes it’s dead-Peter like Stiles remembers him, but lately is mostly Peter in general who’s killing Derek. 

Now that Stiles doesn’t have the excuse of the situation never happening, and knowing that the person really isn’t to be blamed, or the bunch of other reasons why he couldn’t hate the Argents for something they didn’t do, Stiles wants to shoot Peter with a Wolfsbane bullet himself and watch him die. He’d probably set him on fire again, if that’s what it took. He feels angry, and most of that is coming from the terrible fear of Peter’s position, of being alive and close. Too close. It could be to him, to Derek, to Scott, but if he's being honest here he knows who it is even if he doesn't know _why_.

He’s not sure if he’s fear is irrational anymore. 

He doesn’t have another panic attack, thankfully.

But he starts screaming again, just before he wakes up, and right after Peter shifts and goes for Derek with his fangs and claws. Weapons that Stiles has no way to go up against.

It’s unlucky that he hasn’t come to a solution soon enough, and that his Dad happened to be home and he didn’t know it. He went to sleep thinking it was okay too, even if he dreamed again, and woke up to his Dad holding his shoulders tightly and trying to soothe him for all that was useless. It never worked, he had the stop the dreams from happening in the first place, or he wouldn’t get any sleep at all.

Stiles firmly sealed his lips but let himself cry into his Dad’s shirt for a few moments. 

“Stiles, it’s okay. No one’s dying, you’re fine. Everyone’s okay.”

It really wasn’t okay, and Derek was always almost dying lately, but at least he hadn’t said his name. That would have led to questions he couldn’t answer, not without telling him about Scott being a Werewolf, and even more worry if he found out about the panic attacks from before. He didn’t want to bring his Dad into this.

Stiles is still screaming just before he wakes up when Scott confronts him. 

“What’s going on? You know you can tell me anything dude.”

They’re at Scott’s house and it’s really not the time when Stiles is pumped full of adrenaline after getting his hands on the Bestiary again. Stiles decides to be honest as possible, stuck between guilt and some sort of desperation.

“Scott, I really don’t need to talk about this. Can we do it later?”

“You sure?” Scott looks doubtful.

“Yeah, man.”

Scott hesitates, but he nods, and they’re back to what they were doing before. 

It weeks before things change. It might have been a month. 

Derek’s almost dying. 

Shit had hit the fan and he was bleeding out on Dr. Deaton’s table and his face was pulled tight with pain. It hadn’t been Peter, but it might as well have been for all the things he did to cause it. Stiles is seeing red, but he’s shaking. He can’t help but hope this is all another dream hope that he wakes up as soon as Derek’s heart stops. But he knows it’s not when he can focus on the X-rays and Dr. Deaton’s face, and Scott’s worried expression from where he’s patching up Isaac so far away from what's going on but unable to stop with the task to ask. 

But he looks back at Derek, and he’s so fucking scared and he just doesn’t know what to do. 

“Stiles.”

Dr. Deaton. 

His eyes look over to what he’s doing. 

“Help me clean up. Scott is almost finished, and then you can go. Derek needs his rest for now, if he’s going to heal what he needs to. I’ve managed to stop the bleeding.”

Stiles balks because he can’t go. And he’s frozen. His eyes go back to Derek who had passed out a few minutes ago, and been barely conscious before that. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to leave him if he had completely healed under the gauze and tape either. Not even if Derek told him to himself. It doesn't feel real and that's scarier than when his Dad didn't come home for the first time after his Mom's death. 

“Stiles.” Dr. Deaton’s voice is quieter. He sounds like he’s coaxing an animal, but at the moment, he probably is compared to what he normally has to do. 

Stiles doesn’t acknowledge it, but he does start helping him clean up.

There’s not much, but his hands have stopped shaking by the time that he has finished, even though he feels like he’s still shaking. It’s just deeper inside than he can see, a thunder under his skin that's more likely to be the pounding heartbeat in his ears than anything else.

But he doesn’t leave.

He sits down in the chair and ignores the weird looks he getting from Scott, and whatever look he’s getting from Dr. Deaton. He puts his head and his hands and tries not to do anything else. 

Derek was still alive. He probably wasn’t going to die. But he wanted to kill Peter. He wanted to have helped in the fight. Stiles was useless, again, and a liability. 

He wanted a lot of things, but most of all for this to have never to have happened. And to not care as much as he did, or at least be able to fix it.

The dreams had vivid images now. He had to suffer through minutes to hours of Derek painfully dying on the floor of the burnt out house. He wasn’t sure if the time was in his mind, or not, though he had spent enough time stumbling onto bits of information on the passage of time. He knew though, the color of blood and what it would look like hitting the paneling. He knew what Derek’s face looked like when he was in too much pain and wasn’t healing. He knew what the sound was when flesh got ripped through. He knew the sound of him screaming.

The screaming, it turned out, was him. 

He was sitting up in bed, his skin hot and tight, and his throat sore. There were arms around him, and he could hear a heartbeat right next to his ear, and feel the heat soaking into his skin. 

“Scott wasn’t sure what was going on. He thought you were having nightmares about your mother again.”

Stiles swallowed and curled up tighter into himself even though he couldn’t get away from him. Derek’s voice sounded impassive across the room, but he realized it was tightness and not lack of emotion in it while he was pressed so close to it. 

“You kept saying something about killing Peter halfway through.”

He doesn’t know why his laugh comes out sounded like a sob, but it does. Maybe it’s the fact he’s still coming down from the dream wound tight like a spring and full of adrenaline. He could tell that Derek heard more than he was letting on.

“It’s his fault.” Stiles shifts until he can meet Derek’s eyes directly. “It was his plan all along. He wanted you to die.”

He stares back, and just says “I know.”

His fingers are still clutched in Derek’s shirt from the dream.

“What else did I say?”

Something tics in Derek’s jaw. 

“You didn’t say who you were talking to but you were begging them to not let me die.”

Stiles flushes and takes a shaking breath, but that was probably expected. The dream stayed in the Hale house, at the impasse where Stiles couldn’t convince Scott to get Derek out of there. Then he realized. 

“Is my Dad-“

“He’s still not here.”

Stiles wanted to hug Derek closer to him, needed to make sure he was still there. The irrational fear was still present, and he knew the dreams probably weren’t going to go away any time soon. He felt even closer to breaking down. Everything was terrifying and a threat. 

Derek did it for him, pulling Stiles all the way into his lap and tucking Stiles’ head in the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Stiles nosed at the skin and fell asleep with drying tears on his face, and his hands still curled tightly in Derek’s shirt, body still tucked up close and awkwardly. His dreams didn’t tare him awake, he could breath, he could sleep. 


End file.
